X

Slack tips and tricks: Master the art of workplace collaboration

Slack is a hugely popular collaboration tool used by many -- from remote workers to large-scale enterprises -- including CBSi. But it's more than just a chat app; it's powerful and robust in its functionality and integrations, allowing you to set reminders, keep organized, and even have a little fun. Here are the many ways you can leverage Slack to master the art of workplace collaboration.
By Elyse Betters Picaro, Managing Editor
slack.jpg
1 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Customize the look of your Slack

Before we get into all the buried features and handy tools available in Slack, it's important to customize your workspace so that it suits you. Go to the Preferences menu and select Sidebar theme for a choice of eight color combinations. We really like Hoth, because Star Wars. But, if you're feeling creative, there are granular options for customizing your color setting, too.

slack2.jpg
2 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet
slack3.jpg
3 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Snooze those pesky notifications

Some of you might view Slack as more of a distraction. But there's really no excuse for that, because there are ways you can get some peace. For instance, just hit the little bell iconnext to your name and you'll be offered the option to snooze notifications for a set period. Look further down the list and you'll see the option to set Do Not Disturb hours, as well.

slack5.jpg
5 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet
slack6.jpg
6 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Time to react

Slack threads can be quite busy. If you want to respond to something further up the line and avoid comment clash, simply reply to that individual message. Hover over it and hit Start a thread to create a mini thread from there. Or, you can add instant reactions by hovering and clicking Add reaction. From there, you can pick a brief emoji response. Yw. :)

slack7.jpg
7 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Hey, everyone! Pay attention!

Need to get everyone's attention, like ASAP? Send a message to @everyone and they'll all get a notification. This will notify every person on your team, while @channel will notify everyone associated in your current channel. There's also @group, whichwill notify everyone associated with a specific user group, and there's @here for notifying everyone who is online, active, or available. Just use these sparingly. You don't want to become *that* co-worker.

slack8.jpg
8 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Add your calendar

Since Slack is not only just a place for chatting but also streamlining your work day, it offers options to integrate several popular calendar services, including Google Calendar. From the Apps area in the side bar, search for the app, install it, authorize your account, and choose the calendar. Once it's set up, you'll get reminders and more in your channel of your choice.

slack9.jpg
9 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Now add your drive

Don't stop at calendars. Add your drives, too! You can go to Apps in the side bar to find and install your drive of choice, but if you're a Google Drive user, simply paste a link to a Google Drive document in Slack. It'll ask if you'd like to integrate Drive with Slack. If you do, you'll be able to find, make, and share Drive files directly from within Slack. No more tab switching!

slack10.jpg
10 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet
slack11.jpg
11 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet
slack12.jpg
12 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet
slack13.jpg
13 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet
slack14.jpg
14 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Customize your workspace

Make sure you get the OK from higher-ups before playing with this option. Head to the Customize Your Team page and you can adjust many of parts of Slack -- everything from creating custom emoji responses, to the messages displayed as Slack loads up. You can even customize Slackbot (Slack's built-in AI) so that it auto-responds with certain sayings. It can be loads of fun.

slack16.jpg
15 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Have fun with formatting

You can use bold, italic, and struck-through in Slack!

It supports simple text formatting that'll give your messages a bit of flair. Just use *asterisks* for bold, _underscores_ for italics, and ~tildes~ for strikethroughs.

But that's not all: An angled bracket (>) in front of text will put your text into a blockquote format. Three angled brackets (>>>) will blockquote an entire message with multiple paragraphs. A backtick (`) around text can create emphasis by turning your text red and placing it into an offset box. String three of those together around text to create a larger offset block.

And finally, you can create bullet points in messages. Just hit Alt-7 in Windows or Option-8 from a Mac to insert the bullet symbol (•), and then hit Shift-Enter to move down to the next line.

slack18.jpg
17 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Mark as unread

If you don't want a reminder but need to still catch up on what you may have missed in Slack, simply hit the three little dots beside a message and select Mark Unread. You can also hold down the Alt or Option key and then click any timestamp. Then, when you check Slack later, all the message from there after will be marked as unread and waiting for you.

slack20.jpg
19 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

/giphy What did I ever do without you

Warning: This trick isn't good for productivity.

You can add a lot of fun in Slack by hitting the forward slash and selecting a command, which will connect you to an external service that's part of Slack's feature set. One great example of this is /giphy. It pulls from the gif search engine Giphy to serve up a random gif. So, every morning, you can enter /giphy Morning and see what appears. It keeps things light.

slack21.jpg
20 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Look for more fun integrations

So, we've talked about how you can add Google Calendar, Google Drive, and Giphy to expand what you can do with Slack. These are all app integrations, and there are literally thousands of them you can connect to your workspace. For instance, you can use a Pomodoro timer to keep your productivity high. Or you can use Astrobot to bring your emails into Slack, intelligently. You can search for more of these from the Apps area in the sidebar, or see a list of them from here.

slack22.jpg
21 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Meet Slackbot, your AI assistant

We hit on this earlier -- Slackbot. You'll see you already have in your Slack side bar, by default. You can think it as a little Amazon Alexa, but specifically for Slack, and it doesn't support voice. Just enter a question into the Slackbot, and you'll get a prepared answer back. Slack described Slackbot as having three main purposes: To find answers to your questions about Slack; to add customized automatic responses; to access personal reminders and tasks. Neat.

slack23.jpg
22 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Useful search shortcuts

Slack has several useful search shortcuts that make it easy to find files and messages. For example, you can use asterisks to find partial words (example: Hel*). You can also narrow your results by date (example: after:, before:, on:), person (example: from:), and location (in:). You can even search has:link to search only messages that include a URL. If all that's too much for you to remember, just keep in mind that you can also type /s followed by whatever you want to find to easily search for anything across your Slack workspace.

slack25.jpg
23 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Use the Quick Switcher

Get where you need to go faster by using Slack's Quick Switcher. It'll bring you directly to any channel, direct message, or team. Just hit CTRL-K or CMD-K and type the first letter of your wanted destination. You'll see a list of options appear and can choose the one you want or type more letters to narrow it more. (Pro tip: CTRL-T or CMD-T will do the same thing.)

slack28.jpg
26 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet
slack31.jpg
28 of 28 Screenshot by Élyse Betters/ZDNet

Share your screen

Slack has a cool option for you to share your computer's screen with anyone. You can even allow the other person to draw on your screen or take control. Just use the phone icon within any messaging thread to start a voice or video call, then look for the Share your screen icon (the circle with a computer monitor in it on the left of the End call button).

Related Galleries

Holiday wallpaper for your phone: Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, and winter scenes
Holiday lights in Central Park background

Related Galleries

Holiday wallpaper for your phone: Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, and winter scenes

21 Photos
Winter backgrounds for your next virtual meeting
Wooden lodge in pine forest with heavy snow reflection on Lake O'hara at Yoho national park

Related Galleries

Winter backgrounds for your next virtual meeting

21 Photos
Holiday backgrounds for Zoom: Christmas cheer, New Year's Eve, Hanukkah and winter scenes
3D Rendering Christmas interior

Related Galleries

Holiday backgrounds for Zoom: Christmas cheer, New Year's Eve, Hanukkah and winter scenes

21 Photos
Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6: Electric vehicle extravaganza
img-8825

Related Galleries

Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6: Electric vehicle extravaganza

26 Photos
A weekend with Google's Chrome OS Flex
img-9792-2

Related Galleries

A weekend with Google's Chrome OS Flex

22 Photos
Cybersecurity flaws, customer experiences, smartphone losses, and more: ZDNet's research roundup
shutterstock-1024665187.jpg

Related Galleries

Cybersecurity flaws, customer experiences, smartphone losses, and more: ZDNet's research roundup

8 Photos
Inside a fake $20 '16TB external M.2 SSD'
Full of promises!

Related Galleries

Inside a fake $20 '16TB external M.2 SSD'

8 Photos